1. Field
The present invention generally relates to techniques for characterizing a computer system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus that determines a flow rate of air along an airflow path through a computer system.
2. Related Art
To provide sufficient cooling, designers of computer systems are often interested in the flow rate of air through a computer system, which can be measured in linear feet per minute (LFM) or in cubic feet per minute (CFM). These parameters can take a great amount of time to measure experimentally and may be difficult to compute using methods such as computational fluid dynamics modeling due to potentially complex and tortuous air flow paths in the computer system, in addition to the fact that the density of air can change as the air changes temperature while it travels through the computer system. Additionally, directly measuring LFM and CFM in the field using mechanical sensors may require periodic manual recalibration of the sensors used over a long period of time and can be impractical for large populations of servers in datacenters.
Hence, what is needed is a method and system that determines a flow rate of air through a computer system without the above-described problems.